AFP

Ukrainian and Russian forces were fighting for “literally every metre” in Severodonetsk, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as fighting intensified in an eastern region where the country’s top commander said the land “is covered in blood”.

Severodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk have been targeted for weeks as the last areas in the Lugansk region still under Ukrainian control.

Russia’s massed artillery in that region gave it a tenfold advantage, said Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military. 

But, “despite everything, we continue to hold positions”, he said. 

“Every metre of Ukrainian land there is covered in blood — but not only ours, but also the occupier’s.”

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said the latest fighting in Severodonetsk was “very fierce”, adding that Russia was deploying undertrained troops and using its young men as “cannon fodder”.

By attacking Severodonetsk’s last remaining bridges, the Russians were aiming to cut the key industrial city off completely from the rest of the country, said regional governor Sergiy Gaiday. 

“Most likely (in the next two days), they will throw all the reserves to capture the city,” Gaiday said.

He also accused Russia of shelling the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where hundreds of civilians have reportedly taken refuge.

But Leonid Pasechnik, leader of Lugansk’s pro-Russian separatists, pointed the finger at the Ukrainian battalions, saying they were the ones shelling Severodonetsk from the plant.

He told reporters that pro-Russian forces were not pressing aggressively “because it is a chemical industry facility”, warning of the risk of “an environmental catastrophe”.

– ‘War crimes’ –

Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying that attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv — many using banned cluster bombs — had killed hundreds of civilians. 

“The repeated bombardments of residential neighbourhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes,” the rights group said in a report on Ukraine’s second biggest city.

Away from the battlefield, World Trade Organization members gathered in Geneva Sunday, and at the top of the agenda was the issue of tackling global food security threatened by Russia’s invasion of wheat-producing Ukraine.

Tensions ran high during a closed-door session, where several delegates took the floor to condemn Russia’s war, including Kyiv’s envoy who was met with a standing ovation, WTO spokesman Dan Pruzin told journalists.

Then, just before Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov spoke, around three dozen delegates “walked out”, the spokesman said.

That came a day after the head of the European Commission promised Ukraine would receive a clear signal within a week on its bid to join the European Union.

EU leaders are expected to approve the bid at an upcoming summit, although with strict conditions attached. 

In Brussels, demonstrators brandishing blue and yellow Ukrainian flags circled European Commission headquarters Sunday in a show of support.

– Chortkiv strike –

The war has prompted Finland and Sweden to give up decades of military non-alignment and seek to join the NATO alliance.

But Turkey is blocking their bids and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday the issue may not be resolved by an alliance summit later this month.

The United States and Europe have sent weapons and cash to help Ukraine blunt Russia’s advance, alongside punishing Moscow with unprecedented economic sanctions.

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in the town of Chortkiv in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strike destroyed a “large depot of anti-tank missile systems, portable air defence systems and shells provided to the Kyiv regime by the US and European countries”.

The strike — a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine — left 22 people injured, regional governor Volodymyr Trush said.

He added that four missiles fired Saturday evening from the Black Sea had partially destroyed a military installation in the town, about 140 kilometres (85 miles) from the border with Romania.

Concerns eased Sunday over Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. Captured months ago by Russian forces but still operated by Ukrainians, the station had ceased transmitting vital safeguards data two weeks ago.

But plant officials working with the International Atomic Energy Agency have succeeded in restoring transmission, the IAEA said. 

Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said it still wanted to send inspectors to the plant “as soon as possible”.

– Sentences defended –

Alongside the physical fighting, the war is being played out through the courts.

Pro-Moscow separatist authorities in the Donetsk region this week sentenced to death two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

The sentences sparked outrage in Western countries, but separatist Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin said Sunday he would not alter them.

“They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money,” he told reporters, calling the punishment “perfectly fair”.

The families of Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner say they have been living in Ukraine since 2018.

Ukrainian courts have handed three Russian soldiers long prison sentences at war crimes trials.

burs-ar/har/bbk/dva/dhc

Google said on Sunday that it was “very pleased” to be settling, without admission of wrongdoing, a class-action lawsuit that argued it underpaid female employees and assigned them lower-ranking positions.

The $118 million settlement covers about 15,500 female employees who have worked for the company in California since September 2013, the law firms Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP and Altshuler Berzon LLP said in a statement released Friday night.

The company also agreed for a third party to analyze its hiring and compensation practices as part of the settlement.

In a statement to AFP, Google said that “while we strongly believe in the equity of our policies and practices, after nearly five years of litigation, both sides agreed that resolution of the matter, without any admission or findings, was in the best interest of everyone, and we’re very pleased to reach this agreement.”

In 2017, several former Google employees sued the company in a San Francisco court, accusing it of paying women less than men for equivalent positions and assigning women lower positions than men with similar experiences because they had previously earned smaller salaries.

According to a copy of the agreement released by the law firms, “Google denies all of the allegations in the lawsuit and maintains that it has fully complied with all applicable laws, rules and regulations at all times.”

A judge must still approve the agreement, the two law firms for the plaintiffs said.

Google previously agreed in 2021 to pay $3.8 million to the US Department of Labor over accusations it had discriminated against women and Asians.

After a period of blissful silence overhead due to the Covid-19 pandemic, New Yorkers are dealing again with a familiar problem: noisy helicopters.

“With the bigger helicopters, my apartment vibrates,” said Melissa Elstein, who campaigns to ban non-essential chopper flights.

“They pollute our air, creating noise pollution which has negative health impacts,” the 56-year-old told AFP.

New York regularly hums with the whirr of helicopters circling the skies as tourists eye the city from above during short, pricey, sightseeing tours.

They also transport wealthy residents keen to avoid traffic jams on their way to holiday homes by the beach in the plush Hamptons.

Elstein is far from the only New Yorker unhappy at the near-constant din caused by the tens of thousands of flights every year.

Last year, the city received 25,821 calls to its hotline complaining about helicopter noise, an increase from 10,359 in 2020.

The vast majority of complaints — 21,620 — came from Manhattan.

Some respite may be in the offing.

Earlier this month, the New York state legislature approved a bill that could see companies fined $10,000 a day for generating “unreasonable” noise levels.

If Governor Kathy Hochul signs it into law, it would be the first piece of state legislation to tackle noise pollution from the helicopters.

Senator Brad Hoylman, who sponsored the bill, said that “many New Yorkers can no longer work from home comfortably, enjoy a walk along the waterfront, or keep a napping child asleep because of the incessant noise and vibrations from non-essential helicopter use.”

He noted that one helicopter produces 43 times more carbon dioxide per hour than an average car.

“Helicopter noise is not just annoying, it’s detrimental to our health and our environment,” Hoylman said in a statement.

For Andy Rosenthal — president of Stop the Chop, an organization of volunteers seeking to ban non-essential helicopter flights — the legislation does not go far enough.

“It’s a good first step. (But) it is not what we had hoped for. The fight continues,” he said.

– ‘Background noise’ –

New York City has three active heliports: two in Midtown on the Hudson and East rivers, used for corporate and chartered flights, and another near Wall Street in lower Manhattan, from which tourist flights depart.

A 15-20 minute aerial view of New York costs a minimum of about $200 per tourist.

Amid complaints, the administration of then-mayor Bill de Blasio agreed with the industry to reduce the number of tourist flights per year from 60,000 to 30,000, starting in 2017.

They also restricted tourist rides departing New York City to airspace over the rivers surrounding Manhattan, banning them from soaring above land.

Sightseeing helicopters taking off from New Jersey are allowed to fly above Manhattan though, including Central Park.

Commuter flights leaving New York City are also permitted to fly directly over buildings.

“This is an industry that doesn’t have to exist, shouldn’t exist. (Just) for the convenience of the very few,” said Elstein.

Some residents, though, have become used to the sound and accept it as a fact of living in America’s bustling financial, cultural and tourism capital.

“It’s a background noise,” said Mark Roberge, who lives near the heliport at the southern tip of Manhattan.

“It seems to be part of the experience.”

Hank Skinner, who has been on death row in Texas for nearly three decades, says he still remains hopeful.

“I am optimistic I won’t end up here. I should have never been here to start with. And it’s been a long journey,” he told AFP during an interview.

Incarcerated in Livingston, a town some 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Houston, Skinner has always maintained his innocence.

He spoke to AFP via telephone from behind a glass window at the Allan B. Polunsky prison, wearing a white prisoner’s uniform.

In 1995, Skinner was sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend and her two adult sons in Pampa, a small town in the Texas panhandle.

He did not deny having been in the house where the three died, but said he had passed out from a combination of drugs and liquor. Skinner was found in a nearby house with blood on his clothing, but insists that DNA testing would prove his innocence.

The father of three, who recently turned 60 and has a salt-and-pepper beard, Skinner has now been waiting for more than three years for a decision from the state’s highest criminal court.

The Texas Court of Appeals will weigh in on whether it believes the jury that sentenced him would have made a different choice had it had access to DNA tests that are available today.

Texas has 197 death row inmates. In 2020 and 2021, six were executed but 11 were taken off the list after their sentences were reviewed.

Some of those are still behind bars. One of them is Raymond Riles, who had his death sentence commuted to life in prison due to a history of mental illness.

Others are free; Cesar Fierro was returned to Mexico after 40 years on death row.

If the court agrees with Skinner, he will remain in prison but will be able to appeal in an attempt to prove his innocence.

– Five execution dates –

On five different occasions Skinner’s execution date was set.

In March 2010, the US Supreme Court spared him 23 minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection, just after what was supposed to have been his last meal.

It was his lawyer who told him the good news.

“I dropped the phone and I just slid down the wall. And I didn’t realize it but I had tears running out of both eyes,” he said.

“I felt like somebody had picked up a 1,000-pound weight off of my chest. I felt so light. I thought I was gonna float away.”

Once the euphoria and shock wore off, he suffered a terrible low as he came to terms with the fact that he would have to return to death row and “all the suffering here.”

Seeing fellow prisoners die, he said, is harder than being locked up in a small cell 22 to 23 hours a day, without television or physical contact with others except when guards handcuff or uncuff him.

A total of 127 inmates have been put to death since 2010 in Texas, the state that executes the most people.

Living in the detention center means Skinner’s days are filled with noise, morning to evening.

“You have some people here who are mentally disturbed. They beat on the walls, they kick the doors, they scream and holler to the top of their lungs,” he said.

Others shout conversations with imaginary people. Still others engage in real dialogue, but noisily.

“It’s cacophonous all the time. But you learn to just tune it out,” Skinner said.

Because there is no daylight, and also because breakfast is served at approximately 3:00 am, he says it is difficult to maintain any sort of life rhythm.

He sleeps when he collapses from fatigue and takes advantage of the quieter periods of night to read, often perusing other convicts’ files.

Having worked in a law firm before his conviction, he is happy to share his expertise with them.

– French wife –

“I help anybody with their appeals except baby rapers, people who kill and mutilate children. That, I can’t do it,” he said into the phone handset.

“I have a reputation — I’ve walked 11 people out of here. That’s better than practically any death penalty lawyer can say, except my lawyer.”

In 2008, Skinner married a French anti-death penalty activist, who is also convinced he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

If he is released “we will find a little house in a forest where we can both spend time together,” his wife Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner said in French.

As for his remaining years of life, “I’d like to spend every minute of that with my wife,” Skinner said.

He also has another project in mind: “I’m gonna end the death penalty worldwide.”

“I think if people knew what it was really like, they wouldn’t vote for the death penalty. I’ve always believed that,” he said.